@Beam,
That’s the outcome I expected, yeah. Humans are much more averse to potential losses than they are excited for potential gains. When you’re pushed into that situation of “keep me or lose me, the choice is yours” and you aren’t confident you can definitely easily replace the girl, you are going to err on the side of “keep her.”
Anyway, you’ll have a relationship with a girl you’re pretty happy with, who’s clearly quite sold on you. It won’t be the end of the world. You’ll level up in experience.
Also, she is going to know she picked you but you settled for her. That is not a terrible dynamic to go into the relationship with. So long as it doesn’t breed resentment in her (and I do not think it will; she seems very practical), she should be willing to work a little harder to keep you in the relationship.
At some point in the future you may decide, “You know what? This is pretty cool,” and stick around in it. Or you won’t, and it’ll end, and you’ll get back to racking up more experience, now with a little LTR experience under your belt. Either way it’ll be fine.
Nice work on the attempt to set terms, even if your frame still buckled to hers; testing stuff out is how you learn! Also, this girl clearly has a stronger frame in general than you do, so that is to be expected. Still good to practice this stuff and learn it.
Enjoy the relationship with this chick!
ON THIS GIRL’S BEHAVIOR PATTERNS
I would add that while you will only ever have limited information about someone you’ve heard about online through a few written posts...
That said, her cynicism, willingness to pull Beam into a relationship he’s unready for, eagerness to keep entertaining his offers despite repeated prior reversals / disappointments by him, and “slowness to warm up to people” (plus being unapologetic about it) are all symptoms of the same underlying behavioral trait… namely, she is someone who puts herself into shaky relational situations that she tries to will power to success, which ultimately fall apart, reinforcing her cynical world view, and making her cautious about attaching to other people she will likely end up losing if and when the relationship fails.
I wouldn’t say it’s a red flag… it’s not a sign of any kind of personality disorder or anything like that.
Rather it is just a sign that this girl tends to work too hard trying to make work relationships that should by most rights end.
But that might be the best thing for Beam at this point. She’s a lot more confident about this relationship and is likely to lead it, but she isn’t bad to him and she clearly cares about him. This seems like a relationship he can develop some relationship confidence in, and develop his ability to assert himself more as a leader in future relationships. Could well be ideal as a “starter relationship.”
This girl also has a lesson to learn here with Beam as well. If/when it ends, and she finds herself staring down yet another unsuccessful relationship at 31 or 32, she is going to need to ask herself why it is that keeps happening to her, and realize she is trying too hard to make relationships work that shouldn’t. Beam might be able to help her with that when the time comes.
ON FRAME BATTLES
@Skills,
Not everything’s a frame battle, no.
However, in the situation where your position is:
“I don’t see any reason to change how we’re doing things,” and my position is, “We NEED to change how we’re doing things, Skills. Either we change to Position X or we change to Position Y,” our frames are clashing.
You can reply to that by saying, “I understand Chase, I will choose Position X,” or, “Chase, I see that we need to change, but I would like a little time to consider between Position X and Position Y,” both of which are in my frame that “things need to change.”
Now if you agreed on thinking about it that yes, we do need to change, it’s not a frame battle; we both have the same frame. Or if you simply weren’t thinking about it, then once I pointed it out to you you said, “Oh yeah, Chase is right, we do need to change to Position X or Position Y,” it is not a frame battle; I pointed something out and you incorporated it into your frame.
Yet if I point it out to you and it stresses you out and you start pulling your hair out saying “WHY do I have to choose Position X or Position Y? I don’t want Position X or Y! Why can’t things just stay how they were! Oh man, now I have to choose. I don’t want to do this,” that is me imposing my frame (of “we need to change things”) onto you.
What can you do?
One thing you can do is to return with your own counter-frame, such as, “I hear what you are saying Chase and I know you are concerned about ABC. What I can tell you is that I am H and I will always J and will never K. If that is not enough then I will understand and we can Position Y.” Then you have countered with your frame and I must choose from among the options.
From having spoken with you and seen how you communicate I know you know how to do this, Skills, and I am not telling you anything you do not know. I am pretty sure you have done it to me once or more in our PM conversations
Now, if you counter-frame like this, I may respond by rejecting your counter-frame, and restating my frame that you must choose, Skills: Position X or Position Y. And you may respond to my insistence by reiterating your counter-frame. We might go back and forth like this for several rounds before one of us feels like the other’s frame is not going to bend and starts falling into it.
Ultimately, because I (Chase) am the one who wants change, and you (Skills) are fine maintaining the status quo, I will HAVE to choose and make the decision IF I cannot get you into my frame choosing among the choices I set out for you. So I am relegated to arguing, cajoling, pleading, etc. to try to get you to fall into my frame if I want you to take an action I want you to take (“things MUST change, Skills! And you must be the one to choose!”).
It is pretty much always better to be the one setting the choices the other party must choose between, because whatever choices you set are almost always going to all be satisfactory to you.
Note that this doesn’t mean you need to think about LTRs as a “battle of the sexes.”
I don’t usually even think about the term “frame battle.” Note I didn’t use the term “battle” anywhere in this thread before you mentioned it… I just talked about falling into the girl’s frame.
When a woman comes to you with some sort of ultimatum, you don’t want your brain going, “Danger alert! Frame battle imminent!” because that is just silly.
However, you need to have an awareness of when someone is trying to push you into making decisions and be able to step outside that and say to yourself, “I don’t think I agree I need to make a choice in this situation,” or be able to say, “Okay, I can accept that something needs to change, but I don’t accept these choices I’m presented with as the only choices, so let’s examine our situation and let’s see if something DOES need to change, and if so let’s look at what our options are.”
(also perhaps worth adding... there was not much frame battling going on in this thread. Beam's girl set the frames, and Beam responded within them. A frame battle would've been if Beam's girl said he had to choose, and he said well actually I don't think I need to choose, or if he said well we already agreed about this babe, remember? We are doing XYZ... then it'd have been a frame battle)
Chase
